Moses Chapter 6

[snowflake]

11 And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat many sons and daughters;

12 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

13 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God; wherefore Enos prophesied also.

14 And Seth lived, after he begat Enos, eight hundred and seven years, and begat many sons and daughters.

15 And the children of men were numerous upon all the face of the land. And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.

16 All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

 

How does the LDS church (and it's members) understand the long life spans and genealogies described in the Book of Moses? Are they to be taken as accurate and literal?  

[Glenn101]

30 minutes ago, snowflake said:

11 And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat many sons and daughters;

12 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

13 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God; wherefore Enos prophesied also.

14 And Seth lived, after he begat Enos, eight hundred and seven years, and begat many sons and daughters.

15 And the children of men were numerous upon all the face of the land. And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.

16 All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

 

How does the LDS church (and it's members) understand the long life spans and genealogies described in the Book of Moses? Are they to be taken as accurate and literal?  

As accurate and literal as the Bible at least.

 

[snowflake]

30 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

As accurate and literal as the Bible at least.

 

So are you going with Adam literally lived 930 years before he died?

[Kevin Christensen]

Back when I lived in California in the 80s to early I had a discussion with LDS scientist David Bailey on the passage in Joseph Campbell's The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (35-39), wherein Campbell argued that the long lifespans provided a method of "artfully" concealing numbers related to the 26,000 year Precession of the equinoxes.  Campbell saw this as the authors of Genesis pointing back to an older cosmology.  For me, that older cosmology turns out, via Kolob (See Hamlet's Mill, page 73, for instance) , to be related to the Book of Abraham cosmology.   I remember him pulling out a calculator to check the numbers and nodding in satisfaction. 

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V24N03_123.pdf

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[snowflake]

22 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Back when I lived in California in the 80s to early I had a discussion with LDS scientist David Bailey on the passage in Joseph Campbell's The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (35-39), wherein Campbell argued that the long lifespans provided a method of "artfully" concealing numbers related to the 26,000 year Precession of the equinoxes.  Campbell saw this as the authors of Genesis pointing back to an older cosmology.  For me, that older cosmology turns out, via Kolob (See Hamlet's Mill, page 73, for instance) , to be related to the Book of Abraham cosmology.   I remember him pulling out a calculator to check the numbers and nodding in satisfaction. 

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V24N03_123.pdf

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

So do you think the genealogies and long lifespans are literal (earth time) and accurate or not? The Genesis accounts and Book of Moses accounts are very similar and generally agree with each other from what I understand. 

[Kevin Christensen]

20 minutes ago, snowflake said:

So do you think the genealogies and long lifespans are literal (earth time) and accurate or not? The Genesis accounts and Book of Moses accounts are very similar and generally agree with each other from what I understand. 

I don't think so.   Campbell's approach impressed me.  And while I've never focused much attention on ancient genealogies, I have gathered some information here and their that suggests that they were not just passive, objective, and accurate record keeping, but had other purposes.  Sometimes political, sometimes, as Campbell argues, esoteric.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[HappyJackWagon]

2 hours ago, snowflake said:

11 And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat many sons and daughters;

12 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

13 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God; wherefore Enos prophesied also.

14 And Seth lived, after he begat Enos, eight hundred and seven years, and begat many sons and daughters.

15 And the children of men were numerous upon all the face of the land. And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.

16 All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

 

How does the LDS church (and it's members) understand the long life spans and genealogies described in the Book of Moses? Are they to be taken as accurate and literal?  

I've heard the long lifespans explained by concluding that because the human race was so new, many of the diseases and cancers and other ailments that may befall humankind, had not developed. Thus people had longer lifespans because they were closer to the original, perfect creation without all of the other disease that could harm them.

I know many people who take the lifespans literally. I am not one of those people.

[The Nehor]

No idea and while curious I am okay with either. If forced to choose I doubt their lifespan was that long. Long life does not seem that big a blessing to me in any case.

[bluebell]

I don't remember the church having a specific teaching on whether or not the ages are literal.  I think they leave it up to each member to handle that however they feel they should.

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, snowflake said:

So are you going with Adam literally lived 930 years before he died?

I am.

Peter says that a day in the Lord's time is equivalent to 1000 years.
The penalty put upon Adam is that instead of being immortal that  "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." which is exactly what he did.
As we moved further from the immortality of Eden and our biology became more and more fallen that lifespan continued to shorten.

And then D&C 101 describes the Millennial period "30 In that day an infant shall not die until he is old; and his life shall be as the age of a tree;" indicating that lifespans will begin to lengthen again as we move nearer to the Celestialization of the earth.

But the Church as far as I know has no official position on it, and other explanations as to these ages have been speculated.

[bluebell]

I found an old "I have a question..." dealing with the ages of biblical patriarchs.  It appeared in the church's official magazine-The Ensign-in March 1998.

Methuselah was 969 years old when he died (see Gen. 5:27), Noah was 950 (see Gen. 9:29), and Adam was 930 (see Gen. 5:5). Why did these and other ancient patriarchs who lived before the Flood live so long?

It is important to consider three points before attempting to answer why. First, modern revelation supports the scriptural indication that many Old Testament patriarchs lived incredibly long lives (see Moses 8:1–13; D&C 107:41–53). Second, early prophets of this dispensation understood these scriptural references to be literal (see Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 12:37; Wilford Woodruff, in Messages of the First Presidency, edited by James R. Clark, 6 volumes [1965–75], 3:253). And third, early historians took these statements literally. The first-century historian Josephus tells us, for example, “Let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument that neither did they attain to so long a duration of life” (Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, chapter 3, paragraph 9).

The question is not completely resolved in scripture, but several possible answers are implied. Some have interpreted 2 Nephi 2:21 [2 Ne. 2:21] as referring to those living before the Flood: “The days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh.” Others have suggested that it was righteousness that increased the length of their lives. Josephus asserted that “God afforded [the ancients] a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years” (Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, chapter 3, paragraph 9).

President Brigham Young likewise attributed the patriarchs’ longevity to their obedience to the “laws of life.” He urged the early Saints to cease “wasting their lives and the lives of their fellow-beings, and the precious time God has given us to improve our minds and bodies … , so that the longevity of the human familymay begin to return” (in Journal of Discourses, 14:89). A passage in the Book of Mormon supports the idea that the Lord will “lengthen out” the days of the righteous (Hel. 7:24).

Others have suggested that the earth’s environment may have changed radically at the time of the Flood and that this accounts for the decrease in longevity immediately thereafter (see Moses 8:17).

Among other possible purposes for the prolonged life span of the ancient patriarchs was the Lord’s need to establish truth through his law of witnesses. In Lectures on Faith, we read: “It is easily to be seen, not only how the knowledge of God came into the world, but upon what principle it was preserved; that from the time it was first communicated, it was retained in the minds of righteous men, who taught not only their own posterity but the world; so that there was no need of a new revelation to man, after Adam’s creation to Noah, to give them the first idea or notion of the existence of … the true and living God” (Joseph Smith, compiler [1985], 20).

All these factors are feasible explanations. They are not mutually exclusive, nor do they exhaust the possibilities.

[Robert F. Smith]

17 hours ago, snowflake said:

11 And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat many sons and daughters;

12 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

13 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God; wherefore Enos prophesied also.

14 And Seth lived, after he begat Enos, eight hundred and seven years, and begat many sons and daughters.

15 And the children of men were numerous upon all the face of the land. And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.

16 All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

How does the LDS church (and it's members) understand the long life spans and genealogies described in the Book of Moses? Are they to be taken as accurate and literal?  

How LDS members understand these long lives is irrelevant, and the LDS Church likely has no official position on the matter -- except that the LDS Bible Dictionary does say (at "Chronology")

Quote

Bible chronology deals with fixing the exact dates of the various events recorded.  For the earliest parts of O.T. history we rely entirely on the scripture itself; but the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint or Greek translation, and the Samaritan Pentateuch do not agree together, so that many dates cannot be fixed with certainty.

For a full tabulation of the various dates, see S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis, 12th ed. (1926/1954).  The dates you list from Moses 6 are in accord with the KJV (MT Hebrew), and altogether the lives of the Ante-Diluvian Patriarchs cover a period of 1,656 years.  Counting the year of the great Deluge, that would be 1,657 years (Gen 8:13) = 600,000 days + 2 x 7 years.  Not only is the sexigesimal implication clear, but Stephanie Dalley shows the tight relationship that exists with Berossus’ version of the Mesopotamian story and chronology in his Babyloniaca:

Quote

    . . . the survivor of the Flood (Xisuthros, Noah) is the tenth antediluvian king in both Berossus and Genesis (Priestly source), that the month in which the Flood happened is named, and that the ten antediluvian kings whom Berossus cites ruled 432,000 “years” (i.e. 86,400 x 5, five years being sixty months) and in Genesis (Priestly source) for 1,656 “years” (i.e. 86,400 weeks), so the two accounts may originally have shared a common chronological scheme.  Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, rev. ed., 6.

As Raúl López points out

Quote

. . . when the number representing the sum of the ages of the biblical patriarchs is interpreted as having been written in the sexagesimal system, the two totals become numerically equivalent.  López, “The Antediluvian Patriarchs and the Sumerian King List,” Answers in Genesis, Dec 1, 1998, online at https://answersingenesis.org/bible-history/the-antediluvian-patriarchs-and-the-sumerian-king-list/ . 

David Bokovoy makes the same argument in his Authoring the Old Testament, I:108, citing John Watson, Ancient Israelite Literature in its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 130; cf. Carol A. Hill, “Making Sense of the Numbers of Genesis,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 55/4 (2003):239-251, online at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF12-03Hill.pdf .

Edited October 24, 2017 by Robert F. Smith

[JAHS]

Many have suggested that time was counted differently back then than it is now, but there is at least no evidence in the scriptures that a year then was much different than what we call a year now. After the fall of Adam, the genetic line of his descendents would have been very pure, perhaps providing for very healthy long lives.

It is interesting to note that after the flood, the lifespan of people started to decline rapidly, as if the flood caused some alteration in the atmosphere that had an effect on the aging process. The theory goes that the rains that came during the flood destroyed the "canopy" or inversion layer of the atmosphere, permanently changing the earth's climate. This canopy had until this time caused a nearly uniform, warm climate over all the earth and had prevented moist air from rising and condensing to form rain: " . . . the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. . . ." (Genesis 2:5.). Rather, plants were watered by dew that formed "in the cool of the day." (Genesis 3:8.) Destruction of the canopy also allowed small amounts of ozone, formed from oxygen in the upper atmosphere by ultraviolet light from the sun, to reach the earth's surface, greatly shortening the lifespans of people born after the time of Noah.
This is all speculation. 

[cinepro]

3 hours ago, snowflake said:

How does the LDS church (and it's members) understand the long life spans and genealogies described in the Book of Moses? Are they to be taken as accurate and literal?  

The answer to your question is well summarized in the first paragraph from the article bluebell cites above.  While there may be a wide variety of interpretations among different church members, the leaders and official curriculum have always interpreted the numbers as literal ages based on regular earth-years:

Quote

It is important to consider three points before attempting to answer why. First, modern revelation supports the scriptural indication that many Old Testament patriarchs lived incredibly long lives (see Moses 8:1–13; D&C 107:41–53). Second, early prophets of this dispensation understood these scriptural references to be literal (see Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 12:37; Wilford Woodruff, in Messages of the First Presidency, edited by James R. Clark, 6 volumes [1965–75], 3:253). And third, early historians took these statements literally. The first-century historian Josephus tells us, for example, “Let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument that neither did they attain to so long a duration of life” (Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, chapter 3, paragraph 9).

(Emphasis added)

 

[hope_for_things]

3 hours ago, snowflake said:

11 And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat many sons and daughters;

12 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

13 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God; wherefore Enos prophesied also.

14 And Seth lived, after he begat Enos, eight hundred and seven years, and begat many sons and daughters.

15 And the children of men were numerous upon all the face of the land. And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.

16 All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

 

How does the LDS church (and it's members) understand the long life spans and genealogies described in the Book of Moses? Are they to be taken as accurate and literal?  

Its narrative literature, not history.  The authors were not recording actual historical events, they were telling a story.  These books were written thousands of years after these events were purported to have taken place, and the writings have all the markings of the time and place and culture of the people that wrote them.  Is it possible that there are some fragments of actual historical details are components of these stories, yes, that is possible.  However, its entirely impossible for us to have any level of confidence about which fragments might have actually been based on historical events. 

Its much more meaningful to try and understand what lessons about theology, values, life and motives that the authors were trying to communicate to their audience. 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidbokovoy/2015/01/mosaic-authoriship-creating-history-creating-torah/

[thesometimesaint]

4 hours ago, snowflake said:

11 And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat many sons and daughters;

12 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

13 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God; wherefore Enos prophesied also.

14 And Seth lived, after he begat Enos, eight hundred and seven years, and begat many sons and daughters.

15 And the children of men were numerous upon all the face of the land. And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.

16 All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

 

How does the LDS church (and it's members) understand the long life spans and genealogies described in the Book of Moses? Are they to be taken as accurate and literal?  

This Latter-day Saint doesn't.

[snowflake]

51 minutes ago, JAHS said:

Many have suggested that time was counted differently back then than it is now, but there is at least no evidence in the scriptures that a year then was much different than what we call a year now. After the fall of Adam, the genetic line of his descendents would have been very pure, perhaps providing for very healthy long lives.

It is interesting to note that after the flood, the lifespan of people started to decline rapidly, as if the flood caused some alteration in the atmosphere that had an effect on the aging process. The theory goes that the rains that came during the flood destroyed the "canopy" or inversion layer of the atmosphere, permanently changing the earth's climate. This canopy had until this time caused a nearly uniform, warm climate over all the earth and had prevented moist air from rising and condensing to form rain: " . . . the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. . . ." (Genesis 2:5.). Rather, plants were watered by dew that formed "in the cool of the day." (Genesis 3:8.) Destruction of the canopy also allowed small amounts of ozone, formed from oxygen in the upper atmosphere by ultraviolet light from the sun, to reach the earth's surface, greatly shortening the lifespans of people born after the time of Noah.
This is all speculation. 

Yes after the flood the lifespan of humans very quickly drops down to the 100 year old range. Your take above is very much in line with what the bible literally says.

The "canopy" speculation is very interesting in that with an increase in atmospheric pressure and slight changes in atmospheric gas ratios the earth has supported massive dinosaurs, huge insects, giant plants and flying dinosaurs as well. 

 

[snowflake]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

I found an old "I have a question..." dealing with the ages of biblical patriarchs.  It appeared in the church's official magazine-The Ensign-in March 1998.

Methuselah was 969 years old when he died (see Gen. 5:27), Noah was 950 (see Gen. 9:29), and Adam was 930 (see Gen. 5:5). Why did these and other ancient patriarchs who lived before the Flood live so long?

It is important to consider three points before attempting to answer why. First, modern revelation supports the scriptural indication that many Old Testament patriarchs lived incredibly long lives (see Moses 8:1–13; D&C 107:41–53). Second, early prophets of this dispensation understood these scriptural references to be literal (see Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 12:37; Wilford Woodruff, in Messages of the First Presidency, edited by James R. Clark, 6 volumes [1965–75], 3:253). And third, early historians took these statements literally. The first-century historian Josephus tells us, for example, “Let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument that neither did they attain to so long a duration of life” (Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, chapter 3, paragraph 9).

The question is not completely resolved in scripture, but several possible answers are implied. Some have interpreted 2 Nephi 2:21 [2 Ne. 2:21] as referring to those living before the Flood: “The days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh.” Others have suggested that it was righteousness that increased the length of their lives. Josephus asserted that “God afforded [the ancients] a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years” (Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, chapter 3, paragraph 9).

President Brigham Young likewise attributed the patriarchs’ longevity to their obedience to the “laws of life.” He urged the early Saints to cease “wasting their lives and the lives of their fellow-beings, and the precious time God has given us to improve our minds and bodies … , so that the longevity of the human familymay begin to return” (in Journal of Discourses, 14:89). A passage in the Book of Mormon supports the idea that the Lord will “lengthen out” the days of the righteous (Hel. 7:24).

Others have suggested that the earth’s environment may have changed radically at the time of the Flood and that this accounts for the decrease in longevity immediately thereafter (see Moses 8:17).

Among other possible purposes for the prolonged life span of the ancient patriarchs was the Lord’s need to establish truth through his law of witnesses. In Lectures on Faith, we read: “It is easily to be seen, not only how the knowledge of God came into the world, but upon what principle it was preserved; that from the time it was first communicated, it was retained in the minds of righteous men, who taught not only their own posterity but the world; so that there was no need of a new revelation to man, after Adam’s creation to Noah, to give them the first idea or notion of the existence of … the true and living God” (Joseph Smith, compiler [1985], 20).

All these factors are feasible explanations. They are not mutually exclusive, nor do they exhaust the possibilities.

Thanks for the article! I was unaware that Brigham and Woodruff, LDS Prophets, took the dates literally, just like the scripture clearly says. 

[snowflake]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

How LDS members understand these long lives is irrelevant, and the LDS Church likely has no official position on the matter -- except that the LDS Bible Dictionary does say (at "Chronology")

I don't understand why you would ever disregard scripture as irrelevant, something was clearly different before the flood that allowed people to live this long.  

[snowflake]

1 hour ago, JAHS said:

After the fall of Adam, the genetic line of his descendents would have been very pure, perhaps providing for very healthy long lives.

Interesting that  it appears that Noah seems to be selected for two reasons to survive the Flood. He was a just man and his "generations were perfect". 

⁸ But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

⁹ These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

 

[thesometimesaint]

10 minutes ago, snowflake said:

Yes after the flood the lifespan of humans very quickly drops down to the 100 year old range. Your take above is very much in line with what the bible literally says.

The "canopy" speculation is very interesting in that with an increase in atmospheric pressure and slight changes in atmospheric gas ratios the earth has supported massive dinosaurs, huge insects, giant plants and flying dinosaurs as well.

There was no canopy over the earth that could have produced that amount of atmospheric gas concentrations.

 

13 minutes ago, snowflake said:

Thanks for the article! I was unaware that Brigham and Woodruff, LDS Prophets, took the dates literally, just like the scripture clearly says. 

They were wrong.

[Robert F. Smith]

53 minutes ago, cinepro said:

The answer to your question is well summarized in the first paragraph from the article bluebell cites above.  While there may be a wide variety of interpretations among different church members, the leaders and official curriculum have always interpreted the numbers as literal ages based on regular earth-years:

If it were so cut and dried, cinepro, it would have been a simple matter to say so in the 1979 LDS Bible Dictionary, which it did not.  Instead it threw cold water on the idea of those lengths of life being dependable by noting the variants in the Hebrew, Greek, and Samaritan versions.  Since we now know that the Genesis figures in Hebrew can be read in sexigesimal notation as directly equivalent to the overall total in the Sumerian King List, it is most likely that they are not meant to be taken literally, but are symbolic.  Indeed, there are other ages contained in Genesis which scholars take to be deliberately mathematically symbolic.  For example, note the following:

Abraham        7 x 5²                           = 175 years                                         (5 + 5 + 7 = 17)

Isaac                5 x 6²                           = 180               3 x 60 = 180                (6 + 6 + 5 = 17)

Jacob               3 x 7²                           = 147               2 x 70 = 147                (7 + 7 + 3 = 17)

Joseph             1 x (5² + 6² + 7²)         = 110                                                   (8 + 8 + 1 = 17)

This is clearly not accidental.

[Robert F. Smith]

14 minutes ago, snowflake said:

I don't understand why you would ever disregard scripture as irrelevant, something was clearly different before the flood that allowed people to live this long.  

I said that how LDS members felt about it was irrelevant.  I did not say or suggest that Scripture is irrelevant. Indeed, the Brethren often make the point that much of what we read in Scripture is figurative or metaphorical.  A good example is the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, which is never to be taken as literal, a point made repeatedly by the Brethren.  Many LDS members (and maybe most other Bible believers) believe that the story of the rib is to be taken literally.  Their opinion is wrong and irrelevant.

[snowflake]

25 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

There was no canopy over the earth that could have produced that amount of atmospheric gas concentrations.

 

They were wrong.

Well we know that dinosaurs existed, and some of them were able to fly and there were massive insects at one time.  I can agree that maybe there was no canopy, but surely proper atmospheric conditions allowed such life to occur in the past. What could cause these conditions to exist? 

[snowflake]

18 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I said that how LDS members felt about it was irrelevant.  I did not say or suggest that Scripture is irrelevant. Indeed, the Brethren often make the point that much of what we read in Scripture is figurative or metaphorical.  A good example is the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, which is never to be taken as literal, a point made repeatedly by the Brethren.  Many LDS members (and maybe most other Bible believers) believe that the story of the rib is to be taken literally.  Their opinion is wrong and irrelevant.

Fair enough, just wanted to document that I agree with the LDS prophets (Brigham and Woodruff), the Bible and Book of Moses on this one. 

 

Robert, If God created Adam out of dust, is that to be taken literally or not?